Glorfindel...

...and the curious case of the two Glorfindels

Glorfindel

What was the ultimate fate of Glorfindel? Were Glorfindel of Gondolin and Glorfindel of Rivendell one and the same person?

The only real indications in The Peoples of Middle-earth (The History of Middle-earth Vol. 12): XIII Last Writings, Glorfindel. Christopher Tolkien dates the notes he gives here at 1972, the year before his father's death.

These notes clear up one question immediately: at the time of the writing of The Lord of the Rings, Glorfindel of Rivendell was not conceived as the same character as Glorfindel of Gondolin. Tolkien says, 'Its use [i.e. the name 'Glorfindel'] in The Lord of the Rings is one of the cases of the somewhat random use of the names found in the older legends ... which escaped reconsideration in the final published form'.

Tolkien was far from happy with this state of affairs, however, and it seems that
he intended to reconcile the problem by uniting the two strands of the
story. In summary, the notes tell us that Glorfindel's spirit returned
to the Halls of Waiting, but was after a time re-embodied by the Valar.
He then returned to Middle-earth (either in the mid-Second Age or as
a companion of the Istari in the Third). For the full story of his return,
refer to The Peoples of Middle-earth.

The question of Glorfindel's identity, then, brings us to a much wider, and highly relevant, question. Can we accept a writer's personal notes, whether written in preparation for a published work or simply for personal satisfaction, as part of that writer's 'canon'?

The importance of this question is highlighted by the essay entitled The Problem
of Ros in the same volume of The History of Middle-earth. This is an extensive
disposition on the origins and meaning of the syllable "ros" in names such
as Elros. The details need not concern us here: what is relevant is the
fact that, after its composition, Tolkien noticed a detail in the published
Lord of the Rings that essentially negated the discussion. He dismissed
the body of The Problem of Ros with four words; 'most of this fails'.

But what if he hadn't noticed this inconvenient fact (that Cair Andros had already been interpreted, and disagreed with his conclusions)? What if
he had noticed, but had failed to record the fact? Would The Problem of
Ros now be considered part of the 'Tolkienian' canon in the way that many
regard the notes on Glorfindel? Questions like this show that we cannot
simply take such notes at immediate face value.

Despite this, the Glorfindel notes lead many to see his re-embodiment and return
to Middle-earth as 'fact'. The purpose of this note is to show that we
cannot view these 'events' in such concrete terms. This is the reason
that the 'two Glorfindels' are often referred to as separate characters.
This is not because we cannot believe that Tolkien saw them as different
embodiments of the same character (there are strong indications that
he did), but simply because there is no definitive, published, proof of
this.